The purpose of this table is to prompt your imagination. You can use it to create fantasies to play out with your spouse, or follow the prompts to create a sexy story as foreplay. Write the story for your spouse in an email, or whisper it in her ear.

If you have any ideas for items to add to any of the tables please leave them in the comments!

With Fifty Shades of Grey everywhere you look (including Target, right next to the kids toothbrushes, ew!) there’s a lot of interest in bondage, and a lot of couples are experimenting with stuff they never would have thought of before. However, if you’re like me and have no intention of reading those books or watching the movies, you may be wondering what the big deal is — why would anyone want to be restrained during sex? Well, I know nothing about the BDSM “scene” so I can’t speak very broadly, but I can tell you in one word why Sexy Corte and I periodically enjoy adding some light bondage to our sexy time: vulnerability.

To understand bondage let’s talk first about the goal, then the methods, then why it’s fun. The goal is simple: voluntarily restrain one spouse to enhance his or her vulnerability and submission. It seems most common for the wife to be restrained, but I’ve had Sexy Corte tie me down and tease me and it was lots of fun. Usually though, it’s me restraining her. The purpose of the restraint is to give control of your body to your spouse, not to be painful or uncomfortable. Submitting to bondage is a huge demonstration of trust to your spouse because it puts your naked body into their control and makes you supremely vulnerable. The bondage benefits both the dominant and the submissive spouse by giving the dominant person permission to act, and the submissive person permission to let go. The various toys described below are only used to accent the submission that has already been agreed to.

There are limitless methods of bondage, but they generally share a few common features.

Nakedness. The submissive spouse will usually be restrained naked, or at least with her sexy bits exposed. Being naked with your spouse is already a big show of trust, and being restrained kicks it up a notch.

Hand restraint. Often the submissive’s hands are restrained to prevent her from “protecting” herself. (I use quotes, because of course nothing should be happening against the submissive’s desires.) Hands can be restrained above the head (for example, tied to the headboard), behind the back, in front (for front-to-back positions), or even attached to the ankles. Hand restraint is probably the most common element of light bondage. Get those hands out of the way!

Leg restraint. Legs, ankles, and knees can be restrained to keep the wife’s legs spread or to prevent movement in general. Leg restraint is an important element of position restraint and orgasm control.

Head restraint. Head or neck restraint could be uncomfortable or even dangerous. This isn’t something we do.

Eye restraint. Covering the submissive’s eyes can add another layer of trust and enhance vulnerability. Using a blindfold can really make extended foreplay exciting.

Mouth restraint. Sometimes you just want to hear your spouse moan with pleasure instead of talk. Sometimes talking is distracting. Taking away the option to talk can be liberating for the person who is restrained. Always be sure that anyone whose mouth is covered can breathe freely and can signal a desire to stop.

Position restraint. A combination of restraints can be used to hold the submissive spouse in a certain position, say for spanking. This can be critical for orgasm delay and multiple orgasms, which we’ll talk about below.

So what are the actual devices that can be used for bondage play? Almost anything you can imagine can be incorporated, but here are a few ideas. Each of these items probably deserves its own post!

Wedge pillows. Sexy Corte and I enjoy these a lot for positioning, and they include attachments for…

Hand cuffs. We use some padded strips with velcro for closures and plastic clips that can be attached together or to the wedges. We’ve tried metal cuffs in the past, but they’re quite uncomfortable if you’re laying on them.

Under-the-mattress restraints. Looks complicated, but it’s not. The cuffs can be tucked under the mattress when not in use. These are especially useful if you don’t have a headboard suitable for tying to.

Blindfold. If you want to improvise, use a neck tie or panties.

Gags can be similarly improvised, or you can buy one.

Sex swing. We have one that can be quickly hung in a door frame and be used for a ton of positions. It’s easier than it looks.

Spreader bar. Keeps those legs apart. Can be used in many positions, including standing, but isn’t great for missionary. I made ours with a wooden dowel and some eye screws.

Pull-up bar. These can be mounted in a door way and used as a restraint point for securing someone in a standing position. Also great for getting ripped.

Vibrator. There are many kinds, but we find the egg vibrator to be the most versatile. We buy cheap ones (around $7 from Amazon) and replace them once or twice a year when they wear out. We also keep rechargeable batteries charging in our bedroom. A wand vibrator can also be useful for longer duration games or when you need more reach.

(Let me point out that you don’t actually need any toys! This post is getting long enough, so I won’t go into detail, but look forward to a future post on mental-only bondage.)

Finally, what’s fun about bondage anyway?

Intimacy. Like I said at the beginning: the essence of bondage is vulnerability, and vulnerability is the key to intimacy. Bondage will teach you new things about your spouse’s mind and body. Bondage will let you explore new levels of sexual trust. Bondage exposes you to each other in amazing ways.

Passion. Let’s face it: there can be something hot about dominating your spouse or submitting to his or her will. Maybe your sex is normally gentle and loving, and bondage lets you get a little rougher and more physically intense.

Foreplay. Bondage requires time to execute, and all that time can be used as foreplay focused on the spouse being bound.

Orgasm delay. Also known as teasing or edging. When the submissive spouse is free to move she can position her body just the right way to reach orgasm, and bondage can take away that ability and give control to the dominant spouse. It can be extremely difficult for a person to willingly back off from an orgasm when it’s close, but when using bondage the dominant spouse can pull back and keep the submissive spouse right on the edge without going over. This can make the orgasm incredibly powerful when it eventually comes.

Multiple orgasms. After a woman orgasms her clitoris may become intensely sensitive, such that further stimulation is uncomfortable. If her hands and legs are free she may push the stimulation away for relief. However, if she is bound such that she can’t “protect” her clitoris her husband can continue with the stimulation and bring her to multiple orgasms. Sexy Corte describes these as an unending plateau of orgasm, rather than the peak and descent of the normal experience. They’re also quite exhausting, so this probably isn’t something you’ll do every day. As a husband, giving my wife multiple orgasms is one of my absolute favorite things.

Fantasy. Bondage can be used as an element of fantasy or role-playing. It feels naughty, and once you’re in the naughty mindset you can free yourself to try some things that you normally wouldn’t. He’s the villain and she’s the kidnapped princess? She’s the super-spy and he’s the captured rogue agent who knows where the bomb is hidden?

Exploration. Sometimes it’s hard to ask for our sexual desires, even when the marriage has good communication. Bondage can be an avenue for exploring desires that are difficult to speak out loud but perhaps easier to request non-verbally while in the moment. New experiences can break old habits, and you’re already feeling naughty, right?

Escapism. Maybe it’s a minor form of dissociation, but bondage be a form of escapism from everyday life into a secret world of sex with your spouse.

Novelty. Bondage introduces a myriad of new sexual options, new ways to play, new positions, new toys, and maybe even new desires.

In the end bondage should be fun and promote intimacy and vulnerability in your marriage. As always, enthusiasm and responsiveness will ensure that you get the most from your sexual experience.

Let us know what you think in the comments! What are you experiences? Do you have any suggestions to add?

When it comes to sexual positions, there are a few important things to remember.

Remember your purpose. Sex with your spouse should be fun, loving, and intimate. Husbands especially can get focused on accomplishing a position while forgetting the higher purpose.

Don’t get obsessed with novelty. Most couples have sex in the same few ways 90% of the time. That’s normal! It’s great to try new things, but it’s not a competition. Your friends and neighbors aren’t secretly out-doing you with insane new sex positions every night.

Combinations multiply your options. You can significantly increase your variety by using multiple positions in a single sex session. A set of 10 positions can make 720 permutations if you use three positions per session!

Some of the positions you’ll see aren’t anatomically possible. I mean, seriously… some pictures have joints bending backwards, limbs attached at the wrong place, or holes implied where they simply don’t exist. Some of the things pictured are impossible for any human to accomplish. I think the artists and authors of these guides just need to fill space.

“What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.” — Ecclesiastes 1:9. There aren’t really any new positions, just positions that are new to you. Humans have been having sex for a long time.

Don’t forget her orgasm. In our experience, most positions aren’t very stimulating for the wife. Don’t forget to take care of her needs. Ladies first, as we say.

Position guides make great foreplay. Sexy Corte and I sometimes email links to positions to each other during the day. Even if we don’t do anything fancy that night, the mental stimulation gets us in the mood!

Be careful! You can seriously injure yourself if you aren’t wise, especially husbands.

Do you have any more position guides that you’ve enjoyed? Any tips for exploring a variety of positions? Leave a comment!

I sometimes come up with names in my head for things that Sexy Corte does, and she seems to get a kick out of it when I share. In this case, she thought my name was lame (true) and she rechristened the move as the “Double Feature”. Wives, if you’re looking for that perfect Christmas gift for your husband then this might just be it! The “Double Feature” is simple: he gets to come in your mouth and your vagina in the same day.

To give your husband a day he won’t forget, explain the “Double Feature” to him when he wakes up and tell him he can decide when he wants each showing. If you really want him to go crazy thinking about you all day, give him a ticket to carry around in his pocket.

Athol Kay at Married Man Sex Life has a post up about using active listening to connect with your wife while she decompresses from her day. This is a part of something I call emotional undressing. Just like you have to take your clothes off, you also have to undress your emotions if you’re going to connect sexually. Athol’s point is pretty simple:

Most women have a need to verbally decompress their day. Which is a fancy way of saying they need to talk when they come from work, or you come home from work when they’ve been home all day. Women tend to be more emotionally fluid than men, and it can often seem to the guy like he’s been dropped into a verbal puking of half a dozen emotions and disconnected storylines. This is just her clearing her daily event cache. […]

The actual solution is to do what I call “Booing the Villians and Cheering the Heroes”. Which is to say you treat it something like watching a TV show with a bag of popcorn, and simply enjoy the show. When good things happen you say “woo-hoo”, when bad things happen you say “that sucks”. Her friend does something good in her story, say “she’s awesome”, and when some bitch does her bitch thing, say “that bitch”.

And some great tips from the comments:

”That must have been {hard/difficult/frustrating/a relief/description of situation}”

”You must have felt {emotion}”

”Tell me more.”

The need to decompress isn’t limited to women — men need to decompress too, even though it may look different. Since women tend to be more relational then men, it’s not surprising that they decompress by discussing their relationships. Men tend to be more goal-oriented, which means that we decompress by tying up the loose ends of our daily tasks. It takes effort to switch gears when we’re focused on work (or a project), and it’s frustrating to leave a job undone when a good stopping point is in sight.

In the micro, when we get home from work we men tend to have rituals we like to complete before we’re ready to fully engage with our family. For example, I take off my shoes, change into comfy clothes, and wash my face and hands. I love to see my wife and kids when I walk in the door, but I’m not ready to settle in with them until I get a few things done. Even completing these minor tasks helps clear my brain and lets me switch into family mode.

In general, women decompress themselves by discussing their relationships, and men decompress themselves by checking off their to-do list.

Ultimately what we’re talking about here is context switching, and this decompression frees us up to go to the next thing. If you’ve been reading tips on the internet for enhancing the romance in your marriage, most of the tips you’ll find are techniques for assisting you and your spouse to switch into a sexy context. Foreplay is certainly a part of this, but it’s really one of the last steps. The first steps happen when you and your spouse decompress.

If you can identify the steps you have (unconsciously) taken to emotionally undress when you have had a mutually pleasing sexual encounter with your spouse, you can later recreate those steps to assist with a context switch in a more difficult circumstance. Don’t just examine the 10 minutes before you have sex, but consider all your interactions with your spouse over the past 24 hours. Look for the times that your spouse was definitely not in the mood for sex, and then think about what happened between then and your spouse’s orgasm. This whole process is the emotional undressing.

Yesterday El Fury posted about our game, Sexy Jenga. Last night we tested it out. We had a blast! I decided to play to win, so I wore an extra distracting outfit. We put on some sexy music and set up the game at the foot of our bed. One of the great things about being married, is that you have nothing to be embarrassed about. So we didn’t hold back at all. It was fun to get into the role-playing numbers. We were sort of bummed when the tower fell the first time, so we played again. Most of the numbers we had already played came up again, so we added one… or ten… whatever it took to try a new one. By the time the tower fell the second time we were both so aroused that we were ready for the game to end. If you are looking for a way to spice up a night with your spouse, I definitely recommend Sexy Jenga.

Setup: Write the numbers 1-48 on the wooden blocks of your Jenga set. Print out the list below and perform the indicated activity when you pull the block with each number. Each activity should be performed for about one minute, and the game is over when the tower falls or you can’t avoid having sex.

Distract your spouse with your hands while they draw their next piece.

Distract your spouse with your mouth while they draw their next piece.

Sexy Corte and I like to experiment and change things up, but like most couples we have some favorite positions that we use frequently. We call one of these Old Faithful because it very reliably leads to a powerful eruption.

The position is pretty simple: I lay on my back while Sexy Corte kneels over my body at a 90-degree angle with her legs spread. I play with her lady bits while she performs oral sex on me. I’ll use my fingers to play all around outside and inside her body (see: Zoom Technique) to the point that she usually loses focus and forgets what she’s supposed to be doing.

Old Faithful can be carried to completion and it’s one of the best positions for getting Sexy Corte off with my fingers. Sometimes she has a hard time reaching orgasm if I’m not inside her, and Old Faithful makes this possible. From my perspective, there’s almost nothing hotter than my wife having a powerful orgasm with me in her mouth.

After Sexy Corte comes she can either finish me off with Old Faithful, or we can transition to a different position. As you know, there are many positions that are lots of fun but aren’t that stimulating for a woman, so Old Faithful is great as a starter to make sure that Sexy Corte is always satisfied.

Similarly, sometimes we use Old Faithful purely as foreplay and transition before either of us reaches orgasm. Once we’re warmed up we’ll frequently move to “The Usual”, which is a subject for a later post.

Also see: “New Faithful” for a variation that doesn’t make the wife do all the work.

Some of my favorite dates have been here at home. With small children, it can be hard to arrange for a babysitter and go out. Luckily kids need a lot of sleep and after the kids go to bed, the adults can play.

The key to home dates is to be intentional. Sitting on the couch together watching TV doesn’t count. Plan something! But also be flexible and allow for some spontaneity. Our last home date was so simple. All we did was make dinner and dessert together, but it turned into a memorable evening.

Remember, there are no boundaries at home. You aren’t in public, so why not turn the entire experience into a long session of foreplay? By the time the date is done (if you make it that long) you will be so hot for each other that the sex will be fantastic. A stroke here, a little suck or caress there. By the time we were done making dessert we were having so much fun with the whipped cream we practically ran upstairs.

Be romantic. Be creative. Have fun with each other! Does anyone else have ideas for home dates?